Moving to Iowa, swimming upstream

I am afraid that Leila scooped me. She has written about our new job already!

Monsanto's recruiters have talked to me since I started at Ag Alumni. I know one of them well enough that I was cc'd on his email to friends and family about the birth of his daughter last year. This year they called me about a discovery breeder position. The coolest thing about this job is it lets me try all the newest technology and be creative in how to breed corn. The downside is that we are going to have to move to Iowa.


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Not that Iowa is bad, but I love our place here. I love the pastures, the run down barns, the grass growing out of control, the old trees I need to cut down, the chicken coop in the corn crib, the cows in the side pasture. My grape vines. The little orchard we planted. The spot we were going to put the above ground swimming pool. The strawberry patch. Did I mention we have woodcock's that live in the pasture where the field tile drains? There are owls and hawks, raccoons, coyotes, skunks, possums,doves outside the livingroom window, rats, mink, moles, and us. It is a little wild and feels always just out of our control and most of the time I really love it. There are times when the cows are at the neighbors and the pig is rooting up the backyard that I have wanted to load the kids in the car and move to town though.

I didn't want to say anything here because this is such a public forum and we hadn't decided yet. (I really didn't want my boss coming in to my office and wanting to know why I put it on the web before telling him.) Now we have to get our house ready to sell and find somewhere to live in Iowa. Again we need to decide if we want to be city mice or country mice again. Well, OK small town Iowa mice or country mice.

In these uncertain economic times it feels strange to even think about changing jobs. The housing market is crashed here and the big employers in town are laying people off. I feel like we may be trying to swim against the tide. I hope we will be able to sell our place and get settled again. My boss chided me a little on being a bit of a wanderer and we hope to be really settled this time. (Unless there is a cool job in Oregon or Idaho or Washington).

Wish us luck